I had on a long yellow cloak, trimmed with black velvet, that just swept down to my feet and covered them up. Then over my face was a black velvet mask, with gold fringe, that swept down to my bosom like an old man's beard, and over that my hood was pulled so close that not a lock of my hair could be seen.
Cousin E. E. wore a pink cloak, trimmed with white swan's-down, and her mask shone like silver.
Dear sisters, you wouldn't have known me from the Queen of Sheba.
Dempster was black all over—mask, cloak, and boots. It seemed as if half a dozen funerals had been rolled into one, and hung on him.
Well, we crowded into the carriage and drove off. It seemed as if we never should get untangled from the drove of carriages that swarmed around the Academy of Music, and when we got in, and found ourselves struggling with the crowd, we almost wished ourselves back again.
I looked around everywhere, as I went, for that tall and princely form; but the crowd was so thick, and the dresses so queer, that it seemed next to impossible to find out anything or know anybody. The lights from the great glass balloons poured down rainbows on the crowd, that moved and chatted and laughed till the noise was confusing as the dresses.
"Step back, step back!" says Cousin Dempster, all at once, "the procession is coming."
We did step back, and tried our best to see the procession; but the floor was pretty much on a level, and, though I stood on tiptoe, all that I could see was, now and then, the head of an eagle, or a bear, or a giraffe, rising above the crowd, while the music rang out in thunders of sweet sounds, and the people swarmed in and out of the little square pews in the galleries, like bees hiving on a hot summer day.
Of course, I knew well enough that all this moving circus was make-believe, and that every wild animal had a man in him, just as every man has the shadow of some animal in his nature. But I couldn't help stepping back and shuddering a little, when a great big lumbering elephant rolled by, with his trunk curled up in the air, and almost trod on me.
"Oh, mercy!" says I, with a little scream. "He's enough to frighten one out of a year's growth!"